Welcome!

Mike and Shelly Futty are enjoying life in lower Delaware among the cornfields, cattle and horses on neighboring farms. Close enough to the ocean, stores and other conveniences, yet far enough away to enjoy the peace and quiet of the countryside.

Mike is a Delaware native who progressed through several career transitions finally finding one he loved and never became bored in- technology. After graduating from Delcastle Technical High School, he joined the Navy and worked on 637 class fast attack nuclear submarines, helping implement some of the first PC computers in the Navy. During that time, he received the Navy Achievement and Good Conduct medals. His resume also includes such things as Crane and Hoist Mechanic, Foreman, Project Manager, Electrician, Electrical Inspector, Vocational Teacher (high school), Adult Education Instructor, Technical Education Manager, Consultant, Server Engineer, Server Operations Manager, and Server Engineering Manager. His certifications have included Residential Electrical Inspector (IAEI), Commercial Electrical Inspector (IAEI), General Electrical Inspector (IAEI), Continuing Education Instructor #6 (state of Delaware), Vocational Teacher's Certificate (DE), Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, and Microsoft Certified Trainer. He spent many years as a volunteer firemen, is on advisory boards for several schools and technical education programs, and is a spokesperson for the Ronald McDonald House of Delaware. Mike is currently a technical Vice President with Bank of America where he works with server security on everything from from single servers to enterprise-wide cloud computing environments.

Mike's beautiful bride Shelly is a native of Norwood, Ohio and graduate of Norwood High School. She worked at several businesses before dedicating her time to raising the children.

They have three wonderful children- Amanda, Michael, and Tara and three grandchildren- Alex, Kyle, and Nicholas.

Origins of Futty.com and Futty.net

In 2001, after the third time our Internet Service Provider (or ISP) changed ownership and their name forced us to change our e-mail addresses yet once again, I simply decided to set up a domain to maintain a permanent e-mail address. After getting futty.net (and later futty.com), we thought it would be also good to create a web site where we could keep our family and friends informed of what was going on in our lives.

The original web site was to say the least, well, amateurish, but was a great experiment for me to tinker in html and see what it could do. Like most beginners, I put in all of what I thought were the bells and whistles. I used background graphics, MIDI (music) files, Flash files, and anything else I could get my hands on or figure out. I would through things out there without rhyme or reason and ended up with a big pile of files in disjointed directories that was hard to maintain, bulky, and took time to download when you hit it. We had a personal tragedy (things are alright now) that stopped most of what we considered "living" for a couple of years and I let the web site go to heck.

In June of 2005, I started rebuilding Futty.com from the ground up. I did keep some of the original materials, but did so in a better, less cluttered format. Where I used to create photo directories by scratch with a custom web page for each, now I have a photo album that automatically creates thumbnails of each photo, has the ability to add descriptions, and view the photos faster. No custom web pages for it anymore- I just put new photos in the directory and viola- they show up automatically. I started using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to give pages a consistent look and feel. I hope you like the changes and if you have a suggestion, please let me know. If we like the idea and I can figure out how to do it, we will.

In 2010, I recognized I neglected Futty.com for a few years and started rebuilding again. Stipping it down to a simpler design, adding better menus and flash content are just a few of the changes you will see.